Content Warning: Mention of suicidal ideation

Liv: Hi, I’m Liv.

Erica: And I’m Erica.

Both: And we’re sisters.

Liv: I went into an outpatient program, the day program at the hospital. I couldn’t be alive for myself. I didn’t care enough about myself at that time to live for myself. So I clung to things I did love. You gave me a lifeboat because you gave me the love that I gave you, and more.

Erica: I always tried to treat you with the same respect. Yeah, I was dropping you off at the hospital and if you were being a pain to me I would always tell you that up front. If I made you a sandwich to go to the day program, you were going to the day program and I was not letting you not get out of the bed. I made that a rule off the bat and you definitely picked up on that.

Liv: And you held me to it too. There were days where I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to wake up, I didn’t want to get out of bed. And you were like, “Look I’m giving up my day to do this for you, to drive you there and back, to make you food.”

Erica: But I also tried to balance that with maybe giving you a little bit more space. I think it’s a hard balance when people are feeling down and sick because you don’t want to hold them too accountable but you also have to balance that with being like, “No, I’m a person too and I have feelings too. You can’t just completely exploit me to the point where it’s taking a toll on my mental health.”

Liv: You never pretended to be my therapist, you never pretended to be my mom. You were always my sister first and foremost, and my support that I could lean on. And we would talk about times where my mom was doing her mom role as my support. We’d be like, “Yeah, Mom’s being really annoying.” And we’d laugh about that and just be like, “Oh my gosh.” You were very compassionate towards me which is really important because I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone, which I think people can forget sometimes. People will think that someone who’s sick, their actions might be malicious in some way. But at least for me, it was never meant to be malicious. I just had so much pain inside me that I didn’t know how to handle it and I was scared. If you back a dog into a corner, they’re going to bark and bite so you gave me that space that I needed. You never made me feel cornered which made it easier for me to open up to you. And you understood I couldn’t think about your feelings at that time because I was so overwhelmed, but you still made sure to take care of yourself. You still demanded respect from me. Which I think is really important too and I think it’s a piece that a lot of people forget about being there for someone, is that you are still a person.

Erica: I was lucky enough that summer to be in a position where I had time and I had energy and my mental health was in a pretty good place. Yeah it was hard, I’m not going to lie and say it was a walk in the park and it was just as easy as being your sister now. It was a really hard time for me and for us. In my role that I took on with you, I always put myself first. You were a very close second. Does that make sense? I know it’s cheesy to say, but you can’t really love someone else unless you love yourself.

Liv: In being there for me you trained me how to be there for other people. Like, whenever I’m there for someone else now. I’m like, “How would Erica handle this? How does she do it?”

Jason: Hi I’m Jason, this is my friend Paul.

Paul: Howdy, I’m Paul.

Jason: We met all the way back in grade 9, in drama class and pretty much, we’ve been friends ever since. I think it was around grade 11 or grade 12 that we got our licenses and the freedom of driving was a really really big moment for us. Getting our licenses and being able to be in a car, in a locked car pulled over on the side of the road, for extended periods of time opened up that space. We were craving that space to open up to someone about what’s really going on in our lives.

Paul: We would stop on this one street, 9th Line. I don’t know who started first, if someone just wanted to have a conversation about their mental health or something was going on at the time but we ended up stopping on this street more often. We mostly just listened to music and teased each other but then, eventually we started talking about our relationships and then you have to start talking about your feelings because you care about people. And without you knowing it, it opens up a vulnerability that you didn’t realize you had in yourself and that you can actually talk to people about that. I think I’m just being silly and bantering with my friends but I’m actually getting something out of it that I didn’t realize at the time.

Jason: There was never a space where we have to share all our feelings right now.

Paul: “Feelings time!”

Jason: Like, “We must do this.” But to just be in a car pulled over at the side of the road, you’re not going anywhere. But then it would naturally flow into moments where any one of us could be like, “Actually I want to talk to you guys about something.” That was that open safe space to do that.

Paul: Our 9th Line conversations set the groundwork for what would later become a comfort zone where we could talk to each other about things. Jay’s always been a strong person for me, someone who never gets down, can take a beating. One day we had a conversation. “Hey man I’m actually in a really dark place right now. I don’t necessarily need to talk about it, but if I do I want to come to you to keep an eye on me.” That taught me that people actually do break down and I have a job as a friend.

Jason: You didn’t respond in a negative way. You didn’t instantly point at me like, “Dude, get over it”.

Paul: “Not comfortable with this!”

Jason: No, you stuck around, you asked questions and you really showed that you cared in that moment which was so huge for me and I knew that we could start having those conversations more.

Paul: I didn’t actually know what to do at the time. Do I call it out when I see it? Do I need to be his therapist now? What do I do? I just decided to be present and be available.

Jason: I remember the second conversation, the second time around when you came to me saying that you were struggling with your mental health. I was like “Oh, I know exactly how to be there for you, it’s exactly how you were there for me.” It just sort of fell into place. It was almost like we knew what to do already.

Paul: Yeah, we had check-ins regularly after that. It was normal.

Jason: You did a great job. And that’s why mental health is important.

Edmee: Hi, my name’s Edmee.

Pauline: Hi, I’m Pauline.

Edmee: We met, I guess it would have been five years ago or so?

Pauline: Um, more than five.

Edmee: Six?

Pauline: Six and a half?

Edmee: Six and a half at the faculty of music. I remember being in fourth year university and having thoracic outlet syndrome where I wasn’t able to play piano, I could hardly lift a pencil. I had this overwhelming fear that I would never play piano again and that I wouldn’t be able to live my life the way I wanted to live it. But Pauline was always there for me. Throughout all of it I always felt that I had an amazing friend in her, someone who could listen to the struggles I was having and who was able to notice that I wasn’t doing as well as I had been doing and that made me feel a lot less alone.

Pauline: It was the first time in our friendship that I noticeably saw you struggling through something. That was really hard to navigate. I didn’t know how much I should try to prod you and check in on you, or how much I should just let you be and see if you wanted to come talk to me. I remember as you started talking more and more about it, in a single conversation about it you would be sharing more about what you were feeling and what you had gone through and that would make you more emotional.

Edmee: It was a real struggle for me to not have that means to express myself and to have that hinder what I felt to be a really important part of my academic work as well as a music major.

Pauline: As we were having those talks, I knew it wasn’t my place to be giving her solutions. She was already seeing people about it, she was talking to other people about it and was taking care of all that herself. My only job was to listen to what she wanted to tell me and support her in any way that I could.